A Nation Divided

Pinkerton Agents Save the Wild West From Itself

Damn that Baron Samedi, he’s been making deals with both John and Miss Catherine. John made some deal with him before that resulted in some kind of discomfort. Miss Catherine seemed to make a deal where we left that strange woman alone for some specific time and he would tell her how to defeat that woman. He came back with the answer now, he says that if we bind her somehow he would be able to sweep in and take over the woman. His part of the deal is that he wants to keep her body.

What can you do when dealing with some sort of ghost spirit?

Before that, we were at Mister L’s city of Chicago. We followed his trail based on the match book that we found at the gruesome site of the boy he took a face from. [more soon]

As war breaks out again, it’s up to our heroes to put a monkey wrench into the operation of the Lupus family. It isn’t easy as they also want to kill our heroes and have hired an assassin to do just that. Can our heroes stop the house of wolves before their plans come to fruition?

The Lupus Family is selling arms to the Union and Confederacy that are years ahead of current technology. They are also amassing a private army with which to take the Union and Confederacy down for their connections with the French. They plan to use the civil war to weaken the nation and leave it ripe for the picking.

Talks break down between the union and the confederacy and Mr. Pinkerton believes that a third party is to blame. All evidence leads in a complicated direction to the Lupus family. The Lupus family is a powerful family with ties in the military and politics. Heroes discover that Mr. L (lupus) is at the head of the situation. They also learn that his “son” is the one creating the weapons and that Mr. L seems to be “taking” body parts from people and replacing them with brass clockwork.

The purple eyed freak that kills and writes “god is not in heaven, all is wrong in the world” is out there. The heroes manage to track and almost subdue the killer when she reactivates her reality warping powers. Baron Samendi pledges to help if he is given two months and two drops of Tobias’ blood.

A front for the wierdness

Our heroes establish the Invention Convention as a front organization to make money and keep their actions low key. In order to better gather information, they hire the 8th street kids (john’s old gang) to keep their ears open to possible leads. They also take a trip to meet and hire a young Thomas Edison to find that his uncle had plans to sell him off to an unknown third party.

The founding of the Secret Service

I’m beginning to believe that if there’s a devil, his name is Alan Pinkerton. I’m of the mindset that he probably has some agent somewhere reading these entries as I make them. Well, if I ever do meet my end and Mr. Pinkerton and his associates read this; they should know that I’ll never forgive them.

Heck, I shouldn’t forgive myself either. God help me, I think I may be beginning to enjoy these “adventures” as Miss Catherine wants to call them.

He knew where we were. Alan Pinkerton somehow found us in our hotel and came all that way to offer us a job. In the wake of the chaos that ensued after the whole situation with Mister Reynolds, Mr. Pinkerton says that things have changed. He says that under direct order from President Abraham Lincoln, we got offered a job in his Secret Service.

See, there are things even Mr. Pinkerton doesn’t know though.

When Miss Catherine and John woke up, they explained that the ritual worked. Miss Catherine says that she was taken to some other place, like a spirit world. Things were all so strange there, she says. Like her own memories were being played against her by things that couldn’t really understand them.

She said that at one point, she found a house made of candy. Like the story with the two German children. She said that she opened the door and sure enough, the witch was inside. Only she was too big to actually get out. Her arms and hands stretched out like a thin shadow. I think I may get nightmares from that.

The point is that she felt that whatever was in that spirit place didn’t really know what was real and what wasn’t. They couldn’t tell one of her memories from a story. Maybe they thought it was all a story and they just wanted to play too. Either way, something powerful asked her some questions.

The thing killed Mr. Reynolds. Killed him like he was just an ant, whatever he actually was. She says that the thing explained that Mr. Reynolds was a monster, a monster who pretended to be a man. I don’t know what to make of that. Either way, they feel responsible for the way things are now. If that is true, I wonder if it’s been changed for better or worse.

Mr. Pinkerton says that he’s heard so many weird things that we had to be brought in; made official. They won’t be paying us much but the idea is that President Lincoln has given us full authority to stop these weird things.

So we’re the Secret Service now.

Our mission, to protect normalcy. We are what stands between people enjoying their normal lives and all the strange things like Mr. Reynolds that go bump in the night.

The evil masterminds don't seem so evil and evil almost wins

Today I write because if not, I’ll simply go mad.

Rose has left in search of food and bandages. I’ve done all I can for John and Catherine but they won’t wake up. She says that a hospital won’t be able to save them. She tells me that they are behind the wall and only they will be able to get themselves back. God forgive me, I almost struck her! Still, I knew that what she said was the truth. Somehow, I knew that while it seemed to me that they were merely sleeping that there was a great struggle going on.

I should tell what happened at the Exhibition.

We arrived in New York City, and God all the people, the people of the city moved like a great current along its streets. Everywhere I turn, more people. We got the tickets to the exhibition and investigated the place where it would be. We couldn’t see much into the place but it was like a medieval castle high atop a hill. A castle, among this place? It seemed like a different place altogether.

Later, while we were on the way to the exhibition we tricked a young girl who had been following us. She was lively and insisted that she didn’t know anything while not even denying that she’d been following us. John got her to admit that she’d been paid $3000 dollars to follow us but she wouldn’t say who paid her or why. Catherine at one point cut the girl’s face. A small cut and nothing that wouldn’t heal but I couldn’t help but wonder if she was straying too much from the heroine that she wished to be.

We released the girl soon thereafter.

The Exhibition was a fancy dress affair and John seemed to have some trouble fitting in. Catherine suggested that we split up to avoid calling too much attention so I went over to gather information from the help. Many of them had a great amount of fear for Mister Reynolds but at the same time, held him in great respect. I wonder if they’d known? I mingled about for a while until Rose came to collect me.

Rose was the assassin dressed as a Catholic Nun back on the train. This was something that I noticed a few moments after speaking with her. She had this air of pride in herself, tempered by a sense of loss about her. Rose told me that Mister Reynolds is the man behind the Golden Sun. She called him, “her savior” who kept her from succumbing. To what, she didn’t say then but the sadness in her was evident.

The paintings by Nora Daniels seemed to be taken right from our life. There was one however. One of a creature with white fur and antlers, it’s eyes as crimson as the blood on it’s hands.

Mister Reynolds asked us to join them or stand aside.

It seems that the item under the clay monument, when used in some sort of ritual, can be used to change the world. It seems so simple to write that phrase. “Change The World” It’s a small thing to say but, after all that we’d seen and dealt with, I believed that it was possible.

We were faced with an issue like none other. Either change the world (for the better he says) or fight to keep the world as it is. He said that even now is not the worst, he says that in 50 years or so, there will be a war that consumes the whole world. This was will kill millions. What would God have me do? Change His creation to relieve suffering or Leave His creation as is and allow the suffering to continue and in fact, get worse. What if changing His creation is what He had in mind all along?

Since either way could be a sin beyond any other, I could only do nothing. I know that Catherine was angry about that. I know that she wanted me to speak up for one side or the other but, knowing everything that I know now… I still don’t know what to choose. Eventually, she said that she would change the world but only if She were the one to do it. John came along, changing his mind at the last minute.

I heard the ritual being performed from where I was. I heard the last lines and then they fell. I ran to help them, ready to extract revenge from those who would hurt them. But by the time I got to where they were, the others were fleeing, the creature from the painting stood where Reynolds once had and it had a hole the size of a melon through it’s chest.

It fell to the ground with a rather sickening thud.

Rose helped me get John and Catherine out of there. She stopped to set fire to the place, she said that the lies needed to be burned away. I guess I can’t blame her. I certainly didn’t stop her. Am I loosing my sense of right and wrong in this thing? Anyway, we got back to a hotel room and I’ve been waiting since.

An empty grave, a voodoo queen and saying goodbye.

We said our goodbyes and prepared to leave the LaCroix estate. Catherine and Hanna discovered John laying on the ground with multiple cuts about his body. He explained that Old Greg, the strange man from the swamp told him that he would trade the flask that Catherine wears around her neck for… “anything.”

Journal, I know that I’ve succumbed once to temptation and have regretted it ever since then. I dread what someone with malicious intentions would be able to do with the power in the flask. Catherine, god help her, told john that it would be up to him what we do. Thankfully, John doesn’t want to give the flask to Old Greg.

In the meantime, we had other things to do. We rode into town to find out what was in the base of the Clay monument. The monument’s base though was empty. Hanna’s dog however caught some other scent that led it to a lonesome, unnamed crypt. In this crypt we found a strange book with the words “Grimoire” etched into the leather. The dedication read “My painstakingly cultivated collection, Daniel Webster.” We also found a playbill advertising an Exhibition in New York that would showcase work by Nora McDaniels.

Catherine explained to me that Miss McDaniels was an artist that she met but couldn’t save back in the mansion in Blue Ridge.

We were going to travel onward when Catherine decided that she wanted to visit a lady named Marie Laveau. I’d heard whisperings in the market of the woman; they called her the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. When we arrived at her Brothel, I couldn’t enter. I stayed outside with the horses rather than continue with that debauchery.

When they left, the people within were upset with them.

Later, I learned that miss Laveau called upon some spirit named Marinette. Marinette told Catherine that Old Greg was actually someone named Baron Samendi. She was mostly upset about being licked and that Marinette threatened to eat her. I wish I had been there to help her because she said no one had attempted to protect her.

Miss Hanna Left that night. She seemed a bit shaken after the encounter with Madame Laveau but she also seemed like she had something else in mind. Before she left however, she kissed me. I must confess, I don’t know whether she did so out of affection or a willingness to bother me. Maybe it was both. I tried to stand resolute nonetheless.